


The Magical Accident, or The Worst Weekend of Jeff Miller's Life

by calathea



Category: I Want To Go Home! - Korman
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-28
Updated: 2009-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-05 09:22:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calathea/pseuds/calathea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The worst Saturday of Jeff's life started when a lot of howling and screeching woke him up at some ungodly hour of the morning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Magical Accident, or The Worst Weekend of Jeff Miller's Life

**Author's Note:**

> Once upon a time there was this lolcat:  
> 
> 
> And I decided that CLEARLY what the world needed was an I Want to Go Home! magical kitten transformation ficlet.

The worst Saturday of Jeff's life started when a lot of howling and screeching woke him up at some ungodly hour of the morning. At first, he couldn't quite work out what was going on, where he was, or what had woken him. He stared at the tasteful pastel coloured wall of the bedroom in confusion, his mind still trying to catch up. He had just started to make sense of his environment (the guest bedroom at Mike Webster's house, where he and Rudy were staying with the Webster kids while their parents went off for separate dirty weekends) and was staring in disbelief at the glowing digits of the alarm clock (which seemed, despite a great deal of incredulous blinking on his part, insistent that it was seven in the morning, not a time he expected or wanted to see at any point during the weekend) when the screaming started again.

"Jeff! Jeff!" he heard someone shout and then the sound of thundering footsteps coming up the stairs towards his room. "Oh my god, you'd better be able to answer or I'll kill you!"

Jeff blinked and sat up. The bedroom door flew open. Vicky sagged against the doorframe in apparent relief, breathing heavily. "Thank god!" she said. "You're still a boy!"

"Um," said Jeff, nervously. Under the cover of his blankets, he slid a hand towards his groin. "Yes?"

Vicky's expression slowly shifted from relief to mild revulsion, which was comfortingly familiar, at least. It really wasn't like Vicky to express any thing positive about Jeff being a boy and in her presence.

"Did you just _check_?" she asked, wrinkling her nose. "Ugh!"

Before Jeff could respond to this (because really, what guy _wouldn't_ respond to being asked if he was still a boy with a quick equipment check?), there was a loud clatter from downstairs.

"What was that?" Jeff asked.

Vicky straightened up. "Oh heavens, I didn't think they'd be able to get out of that box!" she exclaimed, and then stampeded off downstairs again.

Jeff was left staring at the space she had occupied. "Which box?" he called after her. "Vicky?"

He was just about to lie back down and see if he could relapse into a Saturday morning coma when: "Jeff!" Vicky yelled back from downstairs. "Stop lying around up there and come help, for crying out loud!"

There was some kind of imperative tone that women were born with, Jeff decided glumly as he found himself grabbing a t-shirt and pulling it over his head. It commanded instant obedience even from people who had absolutely no desire to be up and about at seven in the morning, and _really_ had no desire to confront whatever disaster was now recurring downstairs, with accompanying shrieking and occasional thud.

"JEFF!" Vicky commanded again.

"All right, all right, I'm coming!" Jeff yelled back, petulantly, and, with one last wistful look at his bed, headed downstairs to start the next phase of the worst Saturday ever.

***.***

"Okay, no. You're going to have to run it past me again," Jeff said, ten minutes later. He was sitting on the living room sofa gazing numbly at a large cardboard box. The flaps had been folded over to prevent the contents escaping. Every so often the box shuddered and a small plaintive noise would be heard from within.

Vicky crossed her arms and frowned at him. "What part of it did you not understand?"

Jeff stared her. "The part where you're saying _you turned my brother and yours into cats_," he said.

"Well, what part of _that_ don't you understand?" Vicky said, exasperatedly.

Jeff flapped his arms at her. "The part where it isn't _possible_," he said, agitatedly. "People don't just turn into cats! How do you know they didn't go out early? Or are playing a practical joke on us?"

"If they went out early, why did they leave their wallets and Rudy's car keys and Mike's cell phone and, oh, _kittens sleeping in Mike's bed_?" Vicky said, sarcastically, holding up the keys and phone, which she claimed she had found on Mike's desk when she went in to investigate the strange noises she'd heard coming from Mike's room. They had covered this ground extensively already, but Jeff just couldn't accept the theory that his brother was now a cat.

Jeff flapped his arms again. "But... but... How? And why?" Jeff asked, bewildered.

The box shook and there was a soft mewing sound.

Vicky glared at him. "That's not important!" she snapped. "We just need to figure out how to get them back before my mom and dad get back."

"How is it not important?" Jeff said, his voice rising. "If I don't know how you did it, how are we supposed to undo it?"

Vicky crossed her arms and stared at him angrily. Jeff crossed his arms too and slumped back on the sofa, glaring at her.

Before the stalemate could be broken, the box suddenly fell over and two small kittens rushed out and into the room. Vicky leapt to close the door to the rest of the house.

"Bad kitties!" she said, trying to herd them back towards the box.

The larger of the two kittens evaded her neatly and sat down a couple of feet away from Jeff. It was a sleek black cat with one white paw, and it had large blue eyes. It stared at Jeff for a long moment, then yawned pointedly, showing off tiny razor-sharp teeth, and looked away.

The other kitten was a fuzzy patchwork of marmalade and white. It wasn't as secure on its feet as the black kitten, feet too large for the skinny body. Clumsy as it was though, the kitten still managed to slip through Vicky's fingers a couple of times, eventually hiding behind the black kitten. Vicky, reaching out to try and grab both kittens at once, found herself on the receiving end of a casual swipe from a white-socked paw tipped with needle sharp claws.

"Ouch!" Vicky said, rubbing at the scratches the kitten left on her arm. "Rudy!"

Jeff stared at her. "How do you know which is which?" he asked. "If it even is them, which it's not."

Vicky turned a scornful eye upon him. Jeff looked at the kittens again. The black one stared at him with an expression of fuzzy inscrutability and then looked away to begin to wash one ear. The marmalade and white kitten had been distracted by the twitching tail of the black kitten, and was watching it flick back and forth with fascination. It looked like it might be about to make an _epic_ error in judgement, Jeff thought, until the black kitten turned and stared at it in a quelling manner, and then went back to licking a paw. The marmalade and white kitten was trying to pretend it had never even considered pouncing on Rudy's tail.

Weirdly, it was this little by-play that forced Jeff to accept that yes, it was entirely possible that Rudy and Mike had been turned into kittens, and this wasn't either some kind of elaborate practical joke or nightmare from which he might still wake. He was, after all, the reason Rudy's quelling look was quite as practised as it was.

Jeff sighed and crouched down on the floor. "Rudy, come here," he said, holding out his fingers. The black kitten stopped washing for long enough to give him another look of utter disdain, and then looked away. The marmalade and white kitten though bumbled over, half-tripping over its own feet, and sniffed at Jeff's fingers. Jeff petted the kitten carefully, stroking between its ears.

"Can you grab him?" Vicky whispered loudly. "Maybe if Mike is in the box Rudy will go in too."

Jeff turned an incredulous look on her. The black cat unsheathed his claws and began to lick between them. Jeff marvelled that such a small animal could exude that amount of casual menace. "Or, maybe not," Vicky said, in a subdued voice.

"Why do you want them in a box anyway?" Jeff asked. The Mike kitten was purring now, the noise almost too big to come from such a tiny body. Jeff sat down close to it and stroked the cat gently. The black kitten's tail swished angrily.

"I just don't want them to get lost! They're so little! I just want to keep them safe until I can fix this!" Vicky said, her voice starting to hitch in a way Jeff instinctively feared. He glanced sideways at her just as she sniffed. Her eyes looked suspiciously damp.

Jeff panicked, grabbed the Mike kitten and thrust him at her. "Here," he said, "Pet the kitten. Your brother. Your brother the kitten. It'll make you feel better."

Vicky sank down on the floor, the kitten clutched close, sniffling a bit. The black kitten had jumped to its feet when Jeff made his sudden move, and was now trying to look nonchalant near Jeff's feet, watching Vicky closely. Jeff reached out carefully and touched the black kitten's ear. "Are you okay, Rudy?" he said, softly.

The black kitten turned to look at him, then looked down at his paws and back up at Jeff. His tail twitched irritably. "Oh," said Jeff. "Obviously not. Sorry."

The Mike kitten was making small noises of distress and squirming in Vicky's embrace. "Not so tight, Vicks," Jeff said, intervening hastily when he saw Rudy's tail lash again in apparent anger. "You know he wouldn't like you to squeeze him like that if he was a boy."

"Oh!" said Vicky. She looked down at the kitten, which was wriggling madly. "Sorry, Mike."

She set Mike down on the floor, and he immediately went to sit beside Rudy, curling up against the bulk of the larger kitten's body. The two cats stared at the two humans. They looked very small, and despite Rudy's claws and posturing, defenceless.

"Well," said Jeff, after a moment. He wracked his brain for something to say.

Vicky sniffed dolefully.

"What's for breakfast?" Jeff said, finally.

***.***

Some time later, when the long stretch of scratches down Jeff's arm had been disinfected and a band-aid or two applied, and the two books and the vase that Vicky had thrown at him had been picked up and, in the case of the vase, put away somewhere where the large chip out of the base wouldn't be too obvious, Jeff dunked his spoon into his cereal bowl and contemplated the cats again.

Rudy was still watching them steadily, his eyes fixed on Vicky's face. The violence (Rudy and Vicky), swearing (Jeff, after Rudy's claws ripped through the skin of his arm), and howling alarm (Mike, whose tail had found it's way under Jeff's foot during the fracas and whose skittering attempt to evade further damage had send him skidding over the polished floor on top of a small floor rug, straight into a wall) had eventually subsided once Jeff apologised, although he still thought it was asking too much to ask him to come up with a solution to magical cat transformation before breakfast at 7:30 on a Saturday morning. Especially when he didn't know how they'd been turned into cats in the first place.

Mike finished licking the plate that had held the contents of a can of tuna Vicky had found in a cupboard, and wandered over towards the sofa on which Rudy was perched. It took a couple of attempts for him to jump up onto the seat, and even then he had to scramble. Jeff bit his lip to stop himself from laughing, and Rudy, after glancing over at Mike as his fellow kitten curled up next to him on the seat, turned the wattage up on that unnerving blue glare.

Jeff put his bowl down. "Okay," he said, loudly. Vicky, who'd been eating toast and trying to act like Rudy wasn't trying to kill her with his mind, jumped, startled. "So, how did you turn them into cats?"

Vicky mumbled something. Rudy, whose hearing was presumably more acute as a cat, made a low rumbling sound that Jeff might have mistaken for a purr, if it hadn't been for the blue glare of death. "What?" said Jeff.

"I used my great-aunt's spell book," she said, more loudly, a defiant look on her face. "She left it to me in her will when she died, but my parents only gave it to me when I turned sixteen."

"Your great-aunt left you a _spellbook_?" Jeff said, disbelievingly. He glanced over at Mike, who was blinking thoughtfully at Vicky. Or, Jeff assumed it was thoughtfully. Maybe it was just sleepily, it was hard to tell with kittens. Rudy's irritated tail-twitching was more easily interpreted. Jeff found himself wishing Rudy had a tail as a human, since even sixteen years of being Rudy's brother didn't make him easy to read.

Vicky shrugged. "She had a thing about me having 'inherited the family power'," she said, raising her hands to do little quotation marks. "I just thought she'd been watching too much Sabrina the Teenage Witch at the nursing home!"

"I guess not," said Jeff. Rudy's tail twitched again.

"I guess," said Vicky, in a small voice. "I'm sorry, Mike, I was just. I don't know, I thought it would be fun to try a spell! I didn't think it would _work_!"

Jeff looked at her doubtfully. "There's a spell in there called 'turn your brother and his best friend into little fuzzy kittens?" he said. Rudy's tail lashed again. "Cats," Jeff rephrased. "Cats with big claws that I totally respect."

"I don't think it went quite right," Vicky said, her voice almost a whisper now. "I never meant to make them kittens. I mean, cats."

"What was it supposed to do?" Jeff asked, curiously.

Vicky looked hunted. Rudy's death glare of doom ramped up a couple of notches. Even Mike looked about as threatening as it was possible to look while in the body of a very small white and marmalade cat with a humorous patch over one eye. Vicky finally cracked. "Accio Robert Pattinson," she said in a rush, turning red.

Jeff couldn't help it. He started to laugh, not even stopping when Rudy's eyes swung threateningly around to him and Rudy kneaded the cushion of the sofa with his claws unsheathed. The fabric made little ripping sounds, and Vicky winced.

"I'm sorry!" she said again, still puce with embarrassment. She turned to stare at Rudy and Mike. "We'll fix it! I swear I will."

"Who's this _we_?" Jeff protested. "Vicky! I don't know anything about spells!"

"Well, we can't leave them like this!" Vicky said. "Unless you want to explain to your mother that Rudy is a cat!"

"Why would _I_ have to explain?" Jeff said, hotly. "_I_ didn't turn them into cats!"

"I didn't turn them into cats either!" Vicky retorted. "Or, not deliberately," she added after a moment.

Jeff glared at her. Vicky glared back. Jeff didn't know how long that would have gone on for if Rudy hadn't raised his voice in an imperious mew to demand their attention. Vicky looked away first. "I really am sorry," she said, more quietly, and went over to crouch down next to the sofa where Rudy and Mike were sitting.

Jeff raised his eyebrows. She was braver than he was, he decided. Rudy still had his claws unsheathed and the tip of his tail was twitching. Rudy just stared at her unblinkingly and then turned away. Mike, who Jeff had always suspected was a pushover for his little sister, allowed her to pet his head gently and then licked her hand in what Jeff assumed was a gesture of cat forgiveness. Vicky made a little noise and then stood up.

"Okay," she said decisively. "I'll get the book. We can figure this out. You," she said, swinging around to point at Jeff. "Go put some actual clothes on, clean the kitchen table, and find me the salt."

Jeff opened his mouth to argue about her ordering him around, but he caught Mike's eye. Mike looked imploring. Or maybe just extra small and cute. Jeff caved, nodded his head, and said only: "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to figure out how to reverse it," Vicky said. She glanced down at her robe and slippers. "But first I'm going to get dressed."

She turned to the kittens. "You guys stay here, okay?" she said. "You're too little to go outside like this."

Rudy stared at her superciliously, but Mike rolled over the into the patch of sunlight that had moved around to hit the sofa where they were sitting, showing off his little fuzzy white and marmalade belly. Vicky nodded and then hurried out of the room, frowning at Jeff as she left. "Hurry up," she said impatiently.

Jeff rolled his eyes as she left, and went over to Rudy and Mike. Rudy stared at him, but didn't move away when Jeff carefully ran a fingertip over the plush black fur between his ears. "We'll fix this," he told Rudy. Rudy didn't move or make a noise, but he also didn't bite or scratch Jeff, which he decided to interpret as a vote of confidence. "I'll be right back," he told the cats, and he started out the room. Just at the door he heard a little noise behind him, and glanced back over his shoulder. The cats had moved again, Rudy lying down neatly with his paws tucked under his body, Mike rolling over so he was pressed against Rudy's side. His eyes were closed and it was Mike's bigger-than-his-body purr that Jeff had heard. While Jeff watched, Rudy turned his head to nuzzle softly against Mike's neck for a moment. Then he glanced over at Jeff, standing motionless in the doorway, and stared at him unwinkingly. Jeff flushed, feeling horribly embarrassed for a second, and then darted out the room.

***.***

Three hours later, Jeff was starting to wonder if Vicky had even the vaguest idea what she was doing. So far she'd mumbled and muttered her way through half a dozen things that were ("no, really, this one is definitely going to work, just pass me that can of lima beans") supposed to transform Mike and Rudy back into people, but so far all she'd done was break another vase, set off the smoke alarm burning feathers and use a lot of salt. Jeff was just preparing to run down to the convenience store for another package of the latter when the doorbell rang. Vicky, sitting on the living room floor flipping the pages of the book with a harried expression and listing off other ingredients he could buy, froze and looked up. Mike, who had been dozing in a chair near the door, startled and came to his feet with a hiss of alarm.

"Are you expecting anyone?" Jeff said, frowning.

Vicky looked out the living room window. "Oh, shit," she said, her eyes flying wide open. "It's Mrs March from next door. She's got a key, mom probably asked her to come check on us!"

There was the sound of a key in the lock, and then a female voice called: "Yoohoo! Anyone home?"

Vicky jumped to her feet. "Um, in here Mrs March!" she said, heading to the door. She hissed at Jeff as she moved past him: "We have to keep her out of here!"

Jeff looked around the room, which was full of cats and the magic book. He nodded frantically. They rushed into the hallway together.

"Oh Vicky, there you are!" a woman said, beaming placidly at Vicky. She was very tall, or at least her hair was very tall, arranged into a massive pile of curls on the top of her head. She was holding the hand of a small, frowning child. "Tarquin and I just came round to see how you were doing, like your mom asked us too! We brought you cookies, didn't we Tarquin?"

Tarquin scowled even harder. "Yes," he said sulkily. "Even though _I_ wanted them!"

"Oh, silly," his mother scolded him fondly. "Now give Vicky the plate. Perhaps she'll let you have one with a glass of milk!"

Vicky cast a despairing look at Jeff, but held her hand out to take the plate. "Um, yes, of course," she said. "Why don't you and Tarquin come through to the kitchen?"

Mrs March smiled, and followed Vicky through to the kitchen, her son trailing along behind her unwillingly. "Thank you, dear," she said.

Jeff smiled sickly as she walked past, catching sight of two furry little faces peeping round the living room door into the hall. He shook his head at them, and one set of eyes vanished. The blue pair just stared at him. Tarquin caught this and turned to see what Jeff was looking at, but by the time he had noticed the gap in the door, there wasn't a whisker in sight. Tarquin looked back at Jeff suspiciously, but then his mother tugged sharply at his hand and he was pulled toward the kitchen.

"Stay there," Jeff whispered as he passed the door to the living room, and then followed the others into the kitchen.

The next fifteen minutes were excruciating. Mrs March's eyes darted around the kitchen curiously, and both Vicky and Jeff were questioned ruthlessly about what they and their brothers had been up to the night before. Apparently Mrs March had taken Mrs Webster's request to check on them very seriously, and wanted to make sure that they hadn't been lured into unspeakable sins during their parents' brief absence. In reality, Vicky had spent most of the evening on the phone to her friends, Jeff had played on Mike's XBox, and Rudy and Mike had vanished to go do whatever the hell they usually did when they hung out together. Mrs March seemed almost disappointed by Vicky's faithful recounting of these events (though Jeff noticed she missed out the part where she played with her magic books) but after a while Vicky seemed to have convinced her that nothing had been going on. She came to her feet, narrowly avoiding clanging her hairdo on the light fitting. "Well, you seem to be doing fine," she told Vicky with a toothy smile. "So Tarquin and I will leave you to it. Come round if you need anything at all, or if you want to join us for dinner, you're always welcome. Tarquin and I---"

She broke off, frowning suddenly. "Where is Tarquin?"

As if in answer, there was a crash and a high pitched wail from the living room. "Oh crap!" said Vicky. Mrs March looked at her in disapproval. "Sorry, Mrs March," she said hastily. "It's just, um, we're also cat-sitting this weekend. I think maybe Tarquin found them."

Mrs March's brow furrowed. "Your mother didn't mention cats," she said.

"Um, it was very last minute," Jeff improvised hastily. "A favour for my mother."

Mrs March's frown didn't lighten. "You know we don't allow Tarquin around animals since... The Incident," she said to Vicky, with an uneasy glance at Jeff.

Jeff tried to look like he wasn't reaching any horrible conclusions about little Tarquin's chances of growing up to be a psychopath.

"Um," said Vicky. Another crash sounded from the living room. She shared a horrified glance with Jeff and rushed out.

In the living room, one of the rugs was twisted up, a lamp had been knocked over, and Tarquin's shorts-clad rump was poked up in the air as he knelt down to tried to grab something under the cabinet. A little white and marmalade paw was trying to bat away his hand, claws half unsheathed. "Come _out_, kitty," Tarquin was saying, impatiently. "You have to come out and play."

"Tarquin!" Mrs March said, rushing over to grab at Tarquin's hand. "Leave the nice kitties alone."

"They won't _play_," said Tarquin, bad-temperedly. "I want them to play!"

He pulled against his mother's grip, and tried to reach under the cabinet again. "Got him!" he crowed, triumphantly, almost drowning out a little squeak of pain from the kitten.

Jeff didn't know what to do. He could hear the scrabbling sound of a kitten trying to avoid being pulled out from under the cabinet. He assumed it was still Mike that Tarquin was grabbing, since Rudy would have been too big to fit in the little space. Vicky was already trying to say something, flapping her hands half-hysterically at Tarquin. "Stop!" she said. "He's---"

Before anyone could do anything more though, Rudy emerged from under the sofa and strutted towards Tarquin. His fur was a little fluffed out, but as far as Jeff could tell he was uninjured. "Pretty kitty!" said Tarquin, noticing Rudy. He let go of the kitten under the cabinet and turned to Rudy happily, reaching out one hand. "Come play with me!"

Jeff, seeing imminent pain in Tarquin's near future, found himself wondering dispassionately whether Rudy would get away with an assault charge if he was a cat at the time. Thankfully, before Tarquin found out just what the pretty kitty was capable of, his mother caught his outstretched hand and pulled him up to his feet. "No, Tarquin, what have I told you about playing with animals?" she said, sharply.

Tarquin's face fell. "But I waaaaaant to plaaaaaaay," he whined. "Mommy! I want to play with the kitty!"

Mrs March looked harassed. "Well, kitty doesn't want to," she said. "Now it's time to go home. Tell Vicky thank you for the milk."

Tarquin glared at her, and then at Vicky. His mother prodded him. "Thank you," he muttered rebelliously.

Mrs March dragged him off towards the front door, closely pursued by Vicky. "Thanks for stopping by," Vicky was saying. "I'll be sure to tell my mother how kind you were, and about the cookies."

Mrs March looked grateful that Vicky didn't mention Tarquin's behaviour with the cats, and allowed herself to be ushered out of the house quickly.

Vicky leaned back against the front door. "Oh my god," she said, covering her eyes with a shaking hand. "That kid is a serial killer in the making."

Jeff grimaced, and turned back to go into the living room. "He's gone," he announced. Rudy was standing guard next to the cabinet where Mike was hiding. His fur was still fluffed up and that tell-tale tail was curled around him, twitching at the very tip. He was staring at Jeff malevolently.

"It's not my fault their neighbour is a psycho!" Jeff said, defensively. Rudy didn't seem impressed.

"They've gone, I saw them go into the house," Vicky said, reappearing in the doorway. Her voice changed to a softer register. "Mike, it's all right now, you can come out. He's gone, we got rid of him. I won't let him hurt you."

Rudy's tail twitched again and he looked witheringly at Vicky, obviously pretty clear in his own mind who exactly had saved Mike. Luckily, before hostilities could break out, Mike's face popped out from under the cabinet. He looked around mistrustfully. "It's okay," said Vicky again, in that tone that she obviously meant to be soothing. Mike seemed startled by her voice, though, and he retreated again.

Rudy made an impatient mewing noise, and when Mike's head popped out once more, he acted, grabbing Mike by the scruff of his neck and pulling him out from under the cabinet. "Hey!" said Vicky. "Don't do that!"

Rudy didn't even look at her, letting go of Mike before she'd even finished speaking, and then poking his nose into Mike's side when he lay down, blinking in the light. Mike's fur was standing on end and he looked a little wild around the eyes and freaked out, but he managed a little chirruping noise for Rudy. Vicky stepped forward, presumably to try to check on Mike, but when she reached out a hand, Rudy casually batted it away with a paw tipped in unsheathed claws. He moved to sit in front of Mike.

"Ow!" said Vicky, and wiped at a tiny pinprick of blood on the back of her hand. "I was just going to check he was all right!"

Rudy rumbled at her menacingly, and she backed up. "Fine," she said, in a huff. "I'm going to go try another spell in the kitchen."

She flounced out the room. Jeff stayed where he was, watching as Mike came to his feet, looking a little wobbly but not really the worse for wear. "Are you okay?" he asked, and Mike shook himself for a moment, his fur slowly flattening out. He made another of those little chirruping noises, and Jeff grinned, thinking that that was ridiculously cute. He met Rudy's sudden gimlet stare and blinked in surprise.

"Jeff!" Vicky called from the kitchen. "I need salt!"

Jeff, who had narrowed his eyes at Rudy, was recalled to his errands. "All right, I'm going," he called back. He looked back at Rudy again, but he was nonchalantly washing a paw, while Mike, fur flat again, had settled back down on the ground very near Rudy and had his eyes half closed. "I'll be back," he told the cats, and left before he got any more weird ideas.

***.***

It was pitch dark, and they were still no further on. Jeff had been out three more times (yet more salt, caffeine drinks, and pizza for the humans and more tuna for the cats), another half dozen spells had been tried and the house reeked of burning sage, but nothing had worked.

Jeff slurped the last of his drink and then leaned his head in his hands. Vicky was looking ragged around the edges and was muttering to herself non-stop. "Maybe it has something to do with the original spell," he offered, while she flipped another page. "Maybe we need to reverse that rather than do something completely new."

"Of course," she said, sarcastically. "Why didn't I think of that? Oh, wait, _I did_. Four hours ago!"

"All right, all right," said Jeff, holding his hands up. "Geez, it was just a suggestion. Just trying to be helpful."

"Well, stop being helpful," she told him. "Or, if you have to be helpful, go get rid of those pizza boxes out the back and check on the other two."

"They were napping," Jeff said. "In the kitchen where the smell of sage wasn't so bad."

"How was I supposed to know it would make them sneeze that hard?" Vicky said, defensively.

Jeff shrugged, and picked up the pizza boxes to carry them out to the garbage. The kittens were curled up in a ball of black and white and marmalade on a small armchair Mike's mother kept in one corner of the room. They'd seemed to sleep a lot in between bursts of frantic activity, but when Jeff checked it out on the internet it seemed like that was pretty normal kitten behaviour, as was their tendency to sleep almost on top of each other. Jeff smirked, wondering if the guys would be embarrassed by that when they were human again. He went over and picked up the pizza boxes, stuffing them in a garbage bag.

The noise woke the kittens, and one blue eye met his over the curl of white and orange fur. Before Jeff could say anything, Rudy was up on his feet, and then, lightning quick, in front of the back door, staring up at Jeff demandingly.

"What?" said Jeff. "You don't want me to go out?"

Rudy pawed the door. "You do want me to go out?" Jeff guessed. Rudy swiped at his ankle with a paw and yowled, and Jeff winced even though Rudy hadn't tried to break the skin. Rudy's vocalization had woken Mike, though, and now he too was up and standing in front of the door. Or, not so much standing as dancing around. Jeff stared at the two cats. "Ohhh," he said. "Um, do you guys need to go out?"

Mike immediately purred and rubbed against Jeff's ankle.

"They can't go out!" Vicky said shrilly, catching the end of this conversation as she came into the kitchen. "We'll lose them."

Mike mewed pathetically. "They need to go _out_," Jeff told her, firmly. "You know? We don't have a litter box for them."

A rising tide of red flooded over Vicky's face. "Oh!" she said, finally. "Um, is it safe?"

Mike was trying to cross his legs, and even Rudy was starting to look a little desperate.

"They'll stay near the door," Jeff said.

"Um, okay then," said Vicky, and Jeff pushed the door open. The cats flew out into the dark before he even thought the space was big enough for them to squeeze through.

"Er, I guess they _really_ needed to go out," Jeff said, and snickered.

Vicky stared at him, and then her mouth trembled. Jeff winced, bracing himself for her anger. Then Vicky too began to laugh. "Oh god," she said. "Rudy is going to kill me when he's a boy again."

That made Jeff laugh too, and soon they were almost doubled up in the kitchen, some of the tension of the afternoon finally lifting.

They were still laughing when they suddenly heard a tremendous yowling noise. In the distance, a dog started barking at the sound. Jeff flung the door open, nearly breaking his neck on the step outside the back door as he rushed outside. "Rudy!" he called. "Mike!"

There was another loud yowl, and he turned quick to the little patch of grass to the side of the house. There, in the middle of the grass, was an enormous tabby cat with the ragged ears of a fighter. It was easily four times the size of Rudy in his current kitten shape, and it was looming threateningly over him. Rudy had his ears back and his teeth bared, but Jeff could see this was a more than unequal battle. Before he could do anything though, the tabby was suddenly tackled from behind by a small blur of white and marmalade, and the two cats went tumbling away from Rudy. Pride injured, the tabby turned and swiped viciously at Mike, who yowled.

"Shoo! Horrible cat!" Vicky suddenly shouted, and she clapped her hands loudly. All three cats jumped, and then the intruder bolted away into the darkness. "Get away from my brother!"

Across the street, a light came on, and Vicky and Jeff rushed to duck into the shadowed overhand of the Webster house. After a second though, a door banged, and the light went out again.

Jeff breathed a sigh of relief, and turned to look for the cats, his eyebrows flying up at the sight of them. Rudy had one paw set heavily on Mike's back, and he was furiously washing Mike's ear where the tabby had made contact. Mike was just letting him, pressed up close against Rudy's side in the long grass.

Vicky wrung her hands. "Oh no," she said, despairingly. "I think the cat instincts are taking over!"

Rudy stopped what he was doing and stared at her, then went back to licking Mike's ear. Vicky turned and ran inside.

Jeff watched the two cats a moment longer, and drew a different conclusion to Vicky. "Er," he said. "Are you ready to come back inside?"

Mike stood up easily, confirming Jeff's suspicion that Rudy hadn't exactly been holding him down with that proprietary paw. He and Rudy jogged back to the back door, where they stared at Jeff, their eyes glinting red in the light from inside.

In the kitchen, Vicky was on Mike's laptop, which he seemed to take offence at, jumping up on the table and sitting on the keyboard. "Hey!" said Vicky. "I'm trying to read that."

The cat stared at her. "Don't worry," she said, rolling her eyes. "I'm not looking at your bookmarks or reading your email."

"I thought you were trying more spells?" Jeff said, coming in behind Rudy and letting the screen door closed.

Vicky slumped back in her chair. "I don't have any more to try," she said, sounding despairing. "I've tried _everything_. I thought I'd just... maybe someone else has done this."

She gestured at the laptop. "You think someone else turned their brother into a cat?" Jeff said, sceptically.

"It's the internet," said Vicky. "People have done everything on the internet."

"Did you find anything?" asked Jeff, acknowledging the truth of that.

"Not so far," she said. "But there's quite a lot of stuff about cat transformations. A lot of it is... unrelated. But there might be something."

"Hmm," said Jeff.

Mike, who was sitting watching this conversation, suddenly stood up. Vicky reached out to pet him almost absent-mindedly, and he purred a little for her. She smiled tremulously, sitting up to be closer to Mike, who bumped his nose against her face and purred harder.

"I'm so sorry," she told Mike, and her voice was thick with tears. "I've tried everything else I can think of."

Mike chirped at her gently, and then jumped down from the table. Rudy, who had watched all this with an inscrutable expression, followed him out of the kitchen door, and then up the stairs. Jeff noticed he followed behind Mike on the stairs, perhaps worried that Mike wouldn't make it up the risers, although Mike seemed to manage well enough despite his tiny stature. In Mike's room, Mike jumped up onto his bed, and, after kneading his quilt for a few moments, curled up in a small ball. He looked at Jeff, and then closed his eyes deliberately. "You think we should get some sleep?" Jeff guessed. Mike's eyes opened again, and then closed. Rudy jumped up on the bed too, fitting himself against Mike's little body.

Vicky, who had followed them upstairs too, almost smiled at the sight of the two little kittens. "We should take a picture," she said, sounding exhausted.

Rudy's eyes flew open and his tail lashed. "Or not," added Vicky, hastily. The tail stopped moving.

"I think they're right, we should get some sleep," said Jeff. "Pick it up again in the morning when we're better rested."

Vicky looked like she wanted to protest, or maybe cry, but then she nodded. "Our parents won't be back until late tomorrow," she said, sounding like she was trying to convince herself. "There's still time. I'll set my alarm for six."

Jeff shuddered at the though of six on a Sunday, but then he thought of his mother's likely reaction to the news her first born now had four paws and a tail. "Six it is," he said. "So, goodnight," he said.

Vicky wished him a subdued goodnight, and the cats blinked their eyes at him again. Jeff went into his bedroom, and lay down to stare at the ceiling. He was so tired, it all started to feel kind of unreal, and when he stood up again and went down the hall to the bathroom he couldn't stop himself from looking in through the gap in Mike's door. The cats were still there, curled up together. There was a soft noise that after a moment he identified as a rather rusty sounding purr. Remembering from his reading that cats sometimes purred when upset or in pain, he crept into the room. The purr stopped, and Rudy's eyes opened. Jeff paused. Rudy stared at him for a moment, then closed his eyes again. By the time Jeff had taken the couple of steps back to the doorway, that gentle buzzing noise had resumed. Jeff found himself grinning at his reflection in the mirror as he brushed his teeth.

***.***

For the second morning in a row, Jeff woke up the pale light of early morning and the sound of a female voice shrieking. This time though, it was punctuated by hoarse masculine curses. "Oh my god, Vicky," Mike shouted, "Get out of my bedroom!"

"You're okay! You're not a cat!" Vicky was yelling.

Jeff catapulted out of bed in a manner that would have amazed his mother, who swore it took Jeff at least twenty minutes to achieve a totally vertical position in a morning. "Rudy?" he said, crowding into the doorway. Rudy and Mike were on Mike's bed where the cats had been before, though now they were covered to the waist by a sheet. Mike was sitting upright, his hair standing on end crazily. He had a huge bruise on his arm in the shape of a small hand which Jeff, after a shocked second, decided would fit Tarquin's stubby little fingers, and there was a deep scratch on one of his ears. Rudy seemed entirely uninjured. He had his arm slung around Mike's waist, and both of them were shirtless.

Jeff grinned slyly at his brother. "You're okay?" he asked.

Rudy seemed to sigh. "It's entirely possible I have a furball," he said.

"Ugh," said Jeff, cheerfully. "Okay, well, I'm going back to bed. You should too," he told Vicky.

"But I want to know what happened," said Vicky, plaintively.

"We were cats," Rudy said, dryly. "Now we're not. I think it just wore off."

"But..." said Vicky, obviously wanting details.

"Do you really want to remind me right now," Mike said, and glanced at his clock. "At six in the morning, why I just spent 24 hours with fur and a tail?"

Vicky looked stricken. "Oh," she said. "Well, no."

"Then go away," said Mike, firmly. "We can talk about it later."

Vicky nodded fervently. "Okay," she said. She took a step away. "I really am sorry."

Mike's face softened. "I know," he said, and Vicky nodded, and went back to her own room. Her door shut.

"Weren't you leaving?" Rudy said, pointedly. Jeff saw the hand at Mike's waist flex, and Mike settled back down on to the bed, looking embarrassed.

"Mm-hmm," Jeff said. He smirked at them. "You going to tell mom?"

Mike turned even more red and hid his face in the pillow. "Oh god," he said, in a muffled voice.

"I like my sleepover privileges just as they are, thanks," Rudy said, blandly. He paused. "Are _you_ planning to tell them?"

Jeff let his smirk spread even wider. "What will you do for me if I don't?" he said.

"I won't encourage Vicky to use you as her human experiment while she learns witchcraft," Rudy said, with his usual subtle menace.

Jeff laughed, and Rudy raised an eyebrow at him. Mike was purple with embarrassment.

"We'll figure it out later," Jeff told Rudy. "I need more sleep."

Rudy's eyebrow twitched impossibly higher, but he just nodded.

Jeff turned to go, but then turned back. "I'm glad you're okay," he said.

Rudy said nothing, but he inclined his head at Jeff. "We're negotiating later," Jeff promised him.

"I'll await your proposal," Rudy said.

This time Jeff did leave, but as he pulled the door to Mike's room closed he saw Mike turn into Rudy's arms, and what might have been, if Jeff hadn't known better, a smile on Rudy's face before it was pressed into Mike's collarbone.

Ambling back to bed with a yawn, Jeff contemplated the forthcoming negotiations with a pleased smile. The upper hand wouldn't last long, he knew, but just for today, he was in a prime bargaining position not only with Rudy, but with Vicky too. That was maybe even worth the horrors of the worst weekend of his life.

He went back to sleep with a smile, contemplating just what exactly he might extort from a brother in the sappiest stage of love and a thoroughly repentant proto-witch. Life was good, he decided, as he dropped off, even if he'd had to see six in the morning.


End file.
